Valve Software has banned a new batch of professional players accused of betting against themselves. At first, the number of professional Counter-Strike Global Offensive players banned was quite high but Valve later reinstated five of them after their investigation seemed to vindicate multiple players. The accusation from Valve is that all of these players engaged in match fixing and betting on themselves to earn real world money.

Obviously this is an illegal act for pro players so Valve banned the following players who supposedly engaged in the activity:

The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community has made over $150,000 from the sale of the online passes related to the Operation Payback initiative. The news comes from the official Twitter account for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Launched in April of this year, the initiative features seven maps created by the community and chosen by players as the very best. The seven maps were later released on Steam as a map pack for $5.99. It will be available until the end of this month.

Valve has decided that players in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community should be able to police themselves. With that in mind, the company has launched a beta of a new system it has called Overwatch. The system will choose reputable members of the game's community to serve as investigators. When playing the game they'll have a special "Overwatch button" that will alert them that a case is pending to evaluate.

Is public transportation a "brand?" That's the question one has to ask oneself when it reads about the Montreal transit authority threatening two Counter-Strike designers with a $49,200 fine over a new Counter-Strike map based on the Montreal subway station. According to Ars Technica, Diego Liatis and Frédérik Denis spent nine months making a detailed digital version of the Berri-UQAM station.

The six crew members of the $15 million Mars500 experiment each paid 3 million roubles ($98,300) to participate in a 17-month long test to see if people stay healthy and sane on a trip to the red planet. The all-male crew of a 520-day mock mission to Mars had to find ways to ease tensions. After all, if you are on a trip to Mars it's probably not a good idea to pick a real fight with your comrade, who is more than likely a specialist in some field you are going to need. According to a Reuters report the crew turned to video games to ease their tension during the 17-month sim.

A 17-year old gamer playing Counter-Strike in a Jilin, China net café was accused of wall hacking and, following an argument with his accusers, ended up being stabbed in the skull by with a 12-inch long knife.

Hot Blooded Gaming has the story of the incident, which, in turn, is taken from a Sankaku Complex translation of a Chinese blog. The 17-year old stabbing victim retained consciousness and was rushed to the hospital, where it’s reported that after hours of surgery, the knife was removed and the boy appeared to be recovering. Doctors said that the rusty knife missed major arteries, though the boy was placed under observation due to possible complications from the rust on the knife.

The café in question was apparently quite liberal in requiring IDs for entry, making it popular with local youth.

It’s been about five and a half years since Valve released Counter-Strike: Source and a growing gaggle of gamers think it’s about time for some news and action on Counter-Strike 2.

Organized by UK-resident Sam England, the group hopes to goad Valve into issuing an official response on the matter—and to eventually put CS2 into production—by drawing 25,000 members to its Facebook page. The group has already surpassed 2,300 members.

Why the does the group see a need for CS2?

….we want to bolster interest in CS so more people play it, and if we want to regain mainstream attention in the game it needs to be re released as Counterstrike 2. Even if it was just re released with some fixes/patches, additional official maps, a graphical upgrade and a new shiny box... Counterstrike would then survive as a franchise and become popular once again.

England added a few more thoughts:

The most popular multiplayer FPS games on the PC are either non-realistic, less mainstream games or simply very poorly executed ports of console FPS games like Modern Warfare 2. There is no longer a single iconic game on the PC which everyone can enjoy, and play together.

A 15-year old Romanian male stabbed his adoptive mother seventeen times after she cut off the family's Internet service in an apparent bid to quell his online gaming addiction.

After the eruption of violence, the boy, Ionut Savin (pictured), took all the money he could find in the house and went off to the local Internet café, where he reportedly played Counter-Strike for four hours. The boy also apparently missed over 200 days of school as a result of his gaming dependency.

In a further twist, the victim was found by her husband on the couple’s 16th wedding anniversary. After police were called, the boy returned home and offered, “I think I’m the one you’re looking for.”

Savin was described as a “model student,” but “quiet” and “introverted.” He is currently hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic.

The wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is back in the video game news thanks to her involvement with an obscure firm by the name of Magnitude Gaming. Although we were unable to locate a website, Magnitude is described by the Daily Mail as "one of a new breed of companies which manage semi-professional teams in the growing ‘e-sport’ world."

According to the Daily Mail, Blair, an attorney by profession, and her 23-year old son Nicky have accepted positions on the board of the fledgling company.

So why is this an issue? The Daily Mail sees hypocrisy in Blair's involvement with a firm connected - at least peripherally - to violent video games, given that she previously signed on to a report linking violent games to a wave of stabbings in the UK:

The company has run a team playing the Counter-Strike combat game... There have been claims that perpetrators of massacres in the US and Germany have been fans of the game.

Only last year, Mrs Blair... chaired a major inquiry into the growth of knife and gun crime on Britain’s streets which acknowledged the ‘dire consequences on some young people’ of the video games and films they watched.

The resulting report stated: ‘The broader cultural context in which young people live – the music they listen to, the films they watch, the video games and sports they play – are important in articulating values, defining what is 'cool' and fashionable, and legitimising social norms.’

Magnitude founder Gabriel Moraes, who is Nicky Blair's housemate, issued a statement on the flap:

Magnitude has never been involved with games containing any kind of street violence. We had one game involving soldiers in military combat but it had a rating of 18-plus and was a team game. We stopped involvement with that game some months ago.

German gamers aren't taking these repressive measures lying down, however. An estimated 400 gamers assembled for a June protest march in Karlsruhe. German gamer Matthias Dittmayer e-mailed GamePolitics to let us know that more gamer demonstrations are planned for later this month:

Because of this [censorship] there was the (as far as I know) first demonstration of gamers in Germany with up to 400 gamers. The next 3 demonstration in Cologne, Karlsruhe and Berlin are announced for the 25th of July.

As Germany continues to come to grips with the horrific March 11th shooting rampage that left 16 people dead, violent video games have come under renewed scrutiny by elected officials and others.

In the latest news, a gaming competition scheduled for March 27th in Stuttgart has been canceled. Winnenden, where 17-year old killer Tim Kretschmer began his rampage, is not far from Stuttgart.

As reported by Heise Online, the Electronic Sports League (ESL) match would have featured competitive play of first-person shooters Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike Source as well as real-time strategy classic Warcraft 3.

An Associated Press report which appeared on the day of the rampage indicated that Kretschmer was a Counter-Strike player.

Stuttgart Mayor Wolfgang Schuster (left) cited the school shooting as the reason behind the cancellation. Although GamePolitics is working from a Google translation, it appears that, in canceling the ESL match, Schuster was concerned for the feelings of the families and friends of the shooting victims.

First-person shooters Counter-strike and Far Cry 2 have already come in for mention in relation to last week's horrific rampage shooting in Germany.

But World of Warcraft, not one of the usual suspects in the video game violence debate, has now been thrown into the mix by a German politician.

Welt Online reports that Germany's Minister for Social Affairs Mechthild Ross-Luttmann (left) has turned her attention to WoW:

Ross-Luttmann... aims to achieve a general age restriction for addictive computer games. World of Warcraft, for example – available to minors at the age of 12 – might in the near future only be sold to adults. In addition to this, parents need to be further sensibilized [sic]. “Parents must know what danger potential exists in their children’s bedrooms,” Ross-Luttmann said.

Computer game expert and author of "Digital Paradise" Andreas Rosenfelder is rather skeptical about demands like this. “I don’t see a connection between digital role playing games like World of Warcraft and shooting sprees,” he said. World of Warcraft is a game set in medieval times in which the protagonists can take on the roles of dwarfs, elves and wizards. There is no shooting in this game.

"In heated debates there can easily be some confusion,“ Rosenfelder said.

Ross-Luttmann also hopes to begin a secret shopper program in order to evaluate video game rating enforcement by German retailers.

Tim Kretschmer, the German teenager whose shooting rampage left 16 people dead earlier today, was a fan of the first-person shooter Counter-Strike, according to an early report from the Associated Press:

A 17-year-old who would give only his first name, Aki, said he had been studying this year with the shooter at a private business school, and described him as a quiet, reserved person.

Aki said the two played poker together, both in person and online, as well as a multiplayer video game called "Counter-Strike" that involves killing people to complete missions.

A former classmate said... "The only thing which stands out is that Tim was always very good with weapons. He mainly shot air weapons firing plastic balls, but the house had several gun cabinets occupying square metres of walls, mainly air guns."

"He was a pretty good shooter. He used to shoot in a forest behind his house. Sometimes we'd have air gun battles in the summer."

Another student told the AP that Kretschmer seemed troubled:

Sabienne Boehm, 12, said she recently met the shooter through a friend, and that he had shown her a note three weeks ago that he then sent to his parents.

"He wrote to his parents that he's suffering and he can't go on," she said.

GP:Video game violence is an ongoing topic of discussion among German political officials. Today's events will almost certainly spur additional debate on the topic.

The JCWI has told The Times that it disagrees with a Balkan being portrayed as being involved in a criminal underworld – and that the game could even make ‘life hard’ for real-life Eastern European immigrants.

A spokesman said: “The figures show that East European immigrants are not proportionately responsible for any increase in crime. This plays on untrue stereotypes.”

Another young killer, Stephen Kazmierczak, who killed five people and wounded 16 others at Northern Illinois University, was allegedly addicted to Microsoft's Counterstrike killer video-game. "He played a lot of video games, especially Counter-Strike, really loud," said one of his dorm mates...

The intended effect, to foster an environment of mass suicide terrorism in the U.S.A., is a by-product of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' policy... organized by [financier] Felix Rohatyn and [former Secretary of State] George P. Shultz; the same individuals... are the prime backers of a fascist [NYC Mayor Michael] Bloomberg Presidency.

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Wymorence: For me it just boils down to the fact that, even at a giant company, when a game comes out annually it just gives it a vibe of being rushed out the door. And god knows Unity sucked some major lemur with all its bugs...03/31/2015 - 4:22pm

PHX Corp: I launched my spotify account today, and I kinda went a little overboard with adding music03/31/2015 - 3:59pm

Sora-Chan: Con't. Games like AC are a pain to someone like me who likes to play games in order. So when a game gets too many releases too quickly, it puts me off. Only exceptions are games that have no interconnected underlying stories like the FF games.03/31/2015 - 2:53pm

Sora-Chan: Wikipedia has rarely let me down on matters like this. But yeah... AC needs a break.. like two.. or three... or eight years.03/31/2015 - 2:51pm

Conster: There's 9 already?! I think I played 1, 2, and the ones inbetween 2 and 3.03/31/2015 - 2:23pm

Sora-Chan: Con't There are now Nine... of just the main entries into the series. There are 13 more in the "other games" department.03/31/2015 - 2:15pm

Sora-Chan: I tried to get into AC. Was having a decent time with the first one, at which point they had already released three titles. Then a fourth came out... then a fifth... the wall kept growing before I could finish the first.03/31/2015 - 2:14pm

Daniel Lewis: I think ubisoft should give AC a break before it's milked to death,and i'm a big fan of the games03/31/2015 - 1:15pm

Daniel Lewis: The only thing said i disagree with is the final quote on Men's experiences are seen to be universal but women are gendered,though doesn't anita say that games with male protagonists are male power fantasies,so in turn both are gendered03/31/2015 - 1:08pm

Daniel Lewis: i found the video to be much better than any of the TvW series and it's about time the positive women are put in the spotlight03/31/2015 - 1:06pm

Daniel Lewis: So feministfrequency released a positive female character video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXmj2yJNUmQ03/31/2015 - 1:05pm

Daniel Lewis: I think the guy who made the direct leak said it was an april fools joke when a real one was announced03/31/2015 - 12:43pm

MaskedPixelante: No way Nintendo would let information like that get out. Remember, they shut down a memoir about the localization of Earthbound by enforcing a 20 year old NDA on the author.03/31/2015 - 12:42pm

james_fudge: Conster: the larger issue is that Ind. does not protect LGBTQ+ people under state law03/31/2015 - 12:11pm

PHX Corp: @MP I think it is confirmed(not an April Fools joke) http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/31/nintendo-direct-confirmed-for-wednesday-april-1st/03/31/2015 - 12:00pm

Conster: Apparently Pence intends to amend SB101 so denying service isn't allowed - without explicitly protecting LGBT+ and while still allowing the many other things you can get away with now if it's motivated by your religious beliefs.03/31/2015 - 11:53am

MaskedPixelante: http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/30/rumour-nintendo-direct-on-april-1st/ A supposed full leak of tomorrow's Nintendo Direct, so you can all laugh and laugh about how wrong it is.03/31/2015 - 11:35am

PHX Corp: http://kotaku.com/why-a-tekken-7-character-is-being-called-a-phoney-1694724959 Why a Tekken 7 Character Is Being Called a Phoney03/31/2015 - 10:08am